OptionVue could still be unable to send email to your box, however. There are a variety of reasons for this. For instance, a firewall at the home or business where you are running OptionVue might interfere. Or, your ISP might not provide an SMTP server (Hotmail is an example of this.) If you cannot make emailing work, even with authentication turned on, and you do not have a firewall and you do not use Hotmail, we welcome you to drop us a line. Let us know which ISP you use and we will put it on our list of things to look into.

However, there is no use in writing to us about AOL or Yahoo. These two services evidently use extra security measures, as regular authentication approaches did not work. In response to our requests for help they said that they do not support applications trying to use their email server.

Note that sending emails to a local email server is usually not a concern. If you have a local email server (at your place of business, for example), preparing OptionVue to send email to it is relatively painless and usually works fine. The difficulties arise with trying to send emails to a remote server.

2. Steps were taken to improve the software’s handling of quotes reception with eSignal and Thomson One, with the aim of making it so the software never becomes unresponsive, even for just a moment.

3. In Price Charts, you can hold right click to get a specific price and date readout at the cursor location.

4. In Volty Charts, in the “data box” that is displayed when the wand is in use, we now display, in brackets next to IV and SV, the 6-year percentile of IV and SV. However, please be aware that this percentile is computed using a constant 6-year history. So when you select a point in the past, the percentile is based on a certain amount of data that is ahead of that point, unlike the usual percentile which is based entirely on prior history.

5. A new feature in the Portfolio Manager allows users to “archive” all transactions prior to a given date. This new feature, available through a new button in the T.Log window, moves all transactions representing positions closed out prior to a given date into a separate new transaction file. If the user is archiving all transactions for a year, for example, we suggest naming the new log file <account name>2004.

Archiving old transactions “lightens up” your working T.Log and allows the software to work more efficiently. When the operation is finished, the ongoing T.Log will only contain transactions dated from the given date forward, plus any trades involved in opening positions that existed on or beyond the given date. In addition, the program automatically generates a new initial deposit transaction with an amount equal to the original deposit amount plus the net of all transactions that were archived. As a result the Account Status should display the same exact account value both before and after the archive operation. One consequence is that the account has a new “base value” or “initial value” from now on.

6. When typing notes into the Notes Dialog off of the Quotes Display or the Transaction Log, the program now beeps as you type each character after you have entered the maximum number of characters allowed (255). Also, the Notes Dialog is now sizable.

7. When the Gain/Loss field in the Summary section of the Matrix includes previously realized gains/losses there is an asterisk next to that field. Now, you may click on that asterisk (which changes into an ‘x’) to temporarily exclude previously realized gains/losses for this asset. Click the ‘x’ to change it back into an asterisk and previously realized gains/losses are included once again.

8. Graphic Analysis now displays maintenance margin in the summary section so users can get an idea how their requirements might change as the price of the underlying changes. Also dragging the wand shows the specific summary variables at the point the wand crosses the analysis line.

9. TradeFinder has two new ranking bases – both expressing reward/risk ratios. Users may now list recommendations in order of best case return (BCR) divided by worst case return (WCR), or in order of expected return (ER) divided by WCR. Note that the two new ratios are only meaningful if WCR is negative since only then is there any “risk”. However, needing to find a place in the rankings for positive WCR trades, we decided to list all positive WCR trades first, in order of WCR, and then the negative WCR trades in order of their computed ratios. The positive WCR trades go first since they are conceptually “riskless”.

In computing the new ratios, we don’t just divide by WCR. First, we need to negate WCR to make it a positive number since WCR is inherently negative going in. Second, we decided to add a constant “base” number to this now-positive WCR in forming the ratio’s divisor. To explain why, let’s generate an example. Let’s say you have one trade recommendation where the BCR is $6,000 and the WCR is -$10, and another trade recommendation where the BCR is $6,000 and the WCR is -$100. Do we want to say that the first trade is 10x better than the second? Of course not. The first trade is better but it’s not 10x better. But unfortunately, using a simple formula where BCR is divided by WCR would say just that. To help make it so the first trade is considered “somewhat” better than the second but not 10x better, we add a base number to WCR before computing the ratio.

To come up with an appropriate base number, we determined that using the Amount Provided divided by 10 would be good. That way the base number is scaled to the size of the trades being recommended. So, for instance, if you entered $5,000 as the Amount Provided, the program would use one tenth of that amount, or $500, as the constant base number. Consequently, in computing each of the new ratios, the program would then use WCR plus $500 as the denominator.

10. The entire Quotes Display can be printed by clicking a print button in the upper left of the Quotes Display just to the left of the column header “Symbol”. Its contents can also be exported to a comma-delimited text file by checking the “Print to file” box in the Print dialog and providing a file name.

11. You can now change the current account by clicking on the Account label above the Portfolio Manager buttons in the main form. This opens a drop-down list showing all existing accounts and you may select one. Up till now, you could only change the current account after opening one of the four Portfolio Manager windows.